


I've Fallen For You (Quite Literally)

by Cup_of_Lou



Series: Just a Moment in Our Time [3]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: AU, First Meetings, Harry is a clumsy giraffee, Louis works at a library, M/M, One Shot, Slight mentions of Zayn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 13:45:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cup_of_Lou/pseuds/Cup_of_Lou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I may have...fallen...into the shelf.” He lets out a loose laugh, a deep chuckle that gave shivers down my back. I pretended that it was just the cold, shrugging it off like he didn't see the obvious action. I just busied myself with the books, reading their bindings before placing them where they should go.</p><p>“How the hell did you fall into a lower shelf, against the wall, and cause all this damage?” I gave him another puzzled look that caused his face to heat up from where he was seated not two feet away from me. Every glance I took at him, the more I saw that he was the walking definition of perfection. He had a flawless face, and his body seemed to go on forever, plus his fashion sense wasn't half bad. He was perfect, perfectly out of my league.</p><p>(Or where Louis meets Harry in a Library because Harry got distracted and Louis was just doing his job)<br/>My tumblr is http://cup-of-lou.tumblr.com</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've Fallen For You (Quite Literally)

Compared to some jobs, working in a library was one of the easiest for a young adult like myself to have. I had loose hours, most of which I spent on my phone instead of doing actual work, and the pay was good for doing relatively nothing all day. Plus the crowd I served was usually over the age of thirty, eliminating the bothersome younger kids from what I had to deal with. I could listen to music all day, call in as many sick days as I wanted, and the staff was all elderly women with a love for my hair and boisterous personality. Nothing could be easier.

“Louis!” I flinched as her voice rang over the loud sounds of The Strokes that resonated out of my earphones, taking the bud out and turned towards her voice. “Thank god you heard me, I was worrying your hearing was as bad as mine.” Josie let out a well natured laugh as she pushed a full cart of books closer to where my cart was almost empty.

Josie was one of the younger women, being the ripe age of fifty-six as she liked to refer to it as. She had a gently worn face with a petite body and gorgeously styled grey hair, along with her fashion of sweaters and festive broaches, she was the picture perfect image of the elderly. I could only dream to look like her when I reach that age.

“It’s earbuds Jos, their job is to block out sounds. My hearing is still peachy-keen.” I rolled my eyes before pausing my music, mocking her disapproving tsks with my own. She could only laugh at my obnoxiousness, knowing very well that I blasted The Stokes while pausing every so often to scan over any tween romance novel with a hot guy on the front. I was a walking joke, as she would sometimes phrase it, and I thought that was a pretty accurate description.

“‘M almost finished here, where are those going?” I placed another thick book about vampires on the shelf in its correct spot, watching her out of the corner of my eye as she leaned against the metal cart.

“Over in poetry.” She waved her hand towards the back corner where the poetry was kept. “And after this, I think it’s safe to say you can go home, I know Zayn is just going to be broken with your absence.” She took the last couple of tween books off the cart, placing them on the almost full cart so she could wheel the cart away.

“Oh, he is just dying without me.” I rolled my eyes, my words thick with sarcasm. Zayn always said I spent too much time at home, sometimes telling the ladies that, and thought that I was just a pathetic sod who needed a lover to keep me away from the copious amounts of ice cream and shit tv I had been watching lately.

“Give him a hug for me, I haven’t seen him in forever.” Zayn was known for being the unpaid help, dropping by whenever his Tattoo shop was empty to lounge around with me or help around the place. “All us gals miss him, make sure he knows that. He’s always welcome here.” She gave the empty cart an experimental shove, “But anyway, carry on now. Finish up, boot out, I just have some cataloging to do before we close up.” She wheeled down the aisle and towards the front desk, her soft flats sliding against the worn blue carpet as she walked away.

Thank god I wasn’t doing cataloging, the first time I tried to do so I almost broke the age-old computer. Now everyone just assumes I have no luck with elderly electronics, and as long I’m exempt from doing cataloging, I’m fine with all the old gals thinking so. I played my music, Evening Sun from The Strokes filling my ears as I turned my cart towards the back corner of the building.

The day had flown by so quickly, the ten in the morning I had arrived turning into three-thirty, thirty minutes before closing. My fingers were already getting cramped from the hours stacking the books, placing them one inch inside of the shelf but not hitting the back. Very precise and time consuming work for something so simple, at least to me. We were also understaffed, two of our own manning the flu, so work was a little more fast paced with the Friday rush,

I finally passed the last aisle before coming upon the poetry section, the cart squeaking as I turned it to where I was going. Leave it to this aisle, wedged between mystery and historical fiction, to the the aisle that has someone was looking for a book, I thought as I moved the cart to the A section. At least it was only a guy, probably a college student rushing for a book that was the subject of their weekends paper, and not someone else.

He was kneeling on the ground, focusing on the W’s on the second to last shelf as he buried his face into a book I recognized as Oscar Wilde. He payed me no attention, and I intended to do the same. Even as I tried to finish up my job, I couldn’t help but see the crazy head of brown curls he sported, along with the way his body looked like a compressed spring, ready to bounce. But as I said, I tried to ignore him. Sue me if I can notice qualities.

I scooted the cart as close as I could to my side of the wall, just in case he decided to leave when I was stacking, and proceeded to sort out the A poets to stick them on the top shelf. The one thing that I hated about the poetry section was the fact that it was up against a wall, therefore the shelfs went up an extra level that I found almost impossible to reach because of my shorter height. I took in an annoyed breath before stuffing away my pride and ego, grabbing Maya Angelou off the cart and started on my tiptoes to graze over the spot it was to be placed.

But before I could slip the book into its spot and give my stretched shins a rest, a large crash came from my right, from where the college boy was scrunched up. The noise surprised me enough that I dropped my own book and barely managed to maneuver around its descent as it fell next to my foot. My swears soonly mixed with the stuttering apologies of the college student, who when I turned, was the reason to the large noise.

Around him laid twenty books, wiped down from the second shelf where it was almost bare of the books it used to hold. The boy was blushing profusely, his face the color of beets as he looked at me with startled doe eyes. Green doe eyes, to be exact, with a crazy head of hair, and a pair of lips that I found myself wanting to kiss as they stuttered his apologies.

“I was...I just...I didn’t mean to d-do this.” He waved a large hand over the mess of books that was scattered around his figure. “It was an accident.” His eyes shrunk when he saw me reach down to pick up my own book and put it on the cart with  a less angry expression than I had been wearing at the noise.

“Didn’t anyone tell you not to clothesline bookshelves?” I joked and his face turned an even darker shade of red as he stared at me with those distracting green eyes. I tried not to let their emerald color cloud my mind as I knelt down to pick up the books, all the W’s, and he soon fell to his knees as well to collect the books with his freakishly large hands. Big hands, outrageous hair, perfect lips, and vibrant eyes, my mind was all over the place. “How do you even drop all these books at once anyway, they’re stacked against a wall.” I looked at him with my eyebrow raised, his blush deepening with comical speed as he parted his lips to answer

“I...I don’t...I didn’t mean to.” His voice was surprisingly deep for someone with such a young face, barely looking over twenty, his eyes furrowed into a look of worry as he stacked up all the books he had into a stack by my side. “I swear, it was an accident.” How many times did he expect to repeat himself, I thought with a hidden smile.

“Well I know you didn’t mean to love,” I picked up the first book on the stack and read the binding as I could hear him suck in a breath. Most people weren’t used to the love names I blindly threw out, which was normal, “but it seems like you threw yourself into the shelf.”

“I may have...fallen...into the shelf.” He lets out a loose laugh, a deep chuckle that gave shivers down my back. I pretended that it was just the cold, shrugging it off like he didn’t see the obvious action. I just busied myself with the books, reading their bindings before placing them where they should go.

“How the hell did you fall into a lower shelf, against the wall, and cause all this damage?” I gave him another puzzled look that caused his face to heat up from where he was seated not two feet away from me. Every glance I took at him, the more I saw that he was the walking definition of perfection. He had a flawless face, and his body seemed to go on forever, plus his fashion sense wasn’t half bad. He was perfect, perfectly out of my league.

“I may have been kind of distracted, and lost my balance into the shelf.” He admitted shyly, handing me another book as he moved to sit down on the floor and stretch out his legs, his mile long legs that were clad in holey skinny jeans. “I’m quite a clumsy person.”

“What in gods name could have distracted you? I never thought Wilde was ever really the kind to make your knees weak. His writing was more senile that flustering.” I slid another book onto the shelf, my own cart of books forgotten as I kept myself occupied with the presence of this god sculpted guy. But it wasn’t like he could fix this mess by himself, and I was half surprised he hadn't left me to clean it up like any normal person would have done. He was only just sitting there while I put them back into their correct places, giving me a sense of company which I found to be sweet.

“You obviously.” I paused with my fingers on the shelf as my brain finally processed his deeply spoken words. Now it being my turn to wrinkle my face in question. I didn’t just hear what I just did. I couldn’t have. He did not just say that.

“Excuse me?” I looked at him like he had three heads, and by the way his face turned slightly confused told me he wasn’t exactly expecting my reaction to his words. He looked ready to turn tail and run, and I knew that was the complete opposite of what I wanted him to do. “Did you just call me distracting?” I asked with my face smoothing out of the worrying lines it was in previously, nothing would be worse than scolding him over a compliment.

“You’re very attractive, it’s kind of outrageous actually, and when your shirt rode up I kind of lost it. Fell out of balance and was seconds away from jamming my face into the shelf before my hand knocked them all down.” He motioned to all the remaining books in the stack before outreaching his hands towards me with a cheeky, dimpled smile. “I’m Harry Styles, clumsy mess maker.”

His name sounded so fake, like someone pieced it together for a pop star to go by, but his personality from the short amount of time told me he wasn’t the kind to lie. He was more the kind to hold doors, help old ladies cross the street, call himself a mess maker, not the kind to fib about his name. Which made him even further impossible in my mind, he was almost too perfect to be real.

I shook his hand with as little confusion as I could muster, “Louis Tomlinson, short book shelfer.” I knew I was still staring at him like an alien, but I found my actions to be pretty excusable as he had just called me hot and distracting, when in all reality he was both of those terms and I was likely none of the above. When my name reached his ears, his dimpled smile grew even bigger like it was running through the gears in his head, his tongue running over its syllables.

“Well, Louis Tomlinson,” He even made my name sound ten times better than it actually was with that deep, suave voice he had been gifted with, “How would you feel we get more acquainted with each other?” He stood once I numbly placed the last book in its place, dusting his jeans off with the sways of his hands.

“I don’t know if that…” My mind was running into overdrive as I began to think about his words even more. He had just asked me, the twenty-one year old librarian who spent more time with ice cream than with a significant other, on a date. Or an implied date, and that in and of itself was enough for my mind to be blowing out steam. I pulled myself up as well, glancing back over at the semi-full cart I was to be stacking right now.

“Please?” I turned back towards him, finally able to see how tall he actually was when he was standing. He stood a solid five inches taller than myself, which was intimidating and embarrassing all at once. But he struck me more as a gentle giant than anything else, so I pretended not to notice the gap in our heights. Plus the adorable little pout he wore was enough to draw my attention away from his tallness.

“I have work still.” I looked over my shoulder at the abandoned cart that I was told to empty a good thirty minutes ago. I was trying to pansy my way out of this, trying to get him to drop his act of niceness so he could notice that I was just going to be a boring waste of time. But he wasn’t getting the message.

“I could help you,” His face lit up with the sudden idea like he just found the cure to cancer, “and then afterwards we can go get coffee or something. Maybe dinner.” Dinner sounded a little bit more logical given the time, but coffee sounded a lot less intimidating for a first date.

“You wouldn’t mind?” Another puzzled look filled my face. This god-sculpted model was also a good samaritan, like I had predicted, the best possible combination I could be looking for. Yet, he was too perfect, and the more he got to know me, the more he would realize it would be a mistake to waste his time with my less than perfect being.

“Not at all,” He shrugged his broad shoulders before growing a smirk, “and by the way you had issues with the top shelf, it looks like I could be of more assistance than not.” With how quick my face changed into that of blushing surprise, he let out a startling loud laugh that seemed to fill more than just the space of our aisle.

“I’m sorry that some of us can’t be walking on stilts, mr. carnival act.” I let myself laugh as well before walking over to where Maya Angelou was sitting patiently on the top of the row of books I was to be stacking. “But since you brought in that wonderfully needed quality of yourself, you can come be of my assistance.”

“Ouch, a feisty one.” His smirk grew again, but he sauntered over to where I was standing with elongated steps that made him look like a walking tree, a giraffe even, instead of the overgrown child he seemed to be. “Tell me what to do, oh wise one.”

“Oi,” I fake swatted him with the book. He simply played it off with a small laugh, his eyes trained on me as to wait for what to do, “Don’t sass your elders, didn’t your parents ever teach you that? And take this, put it there.” I pointed a stretched finger towards where the book was to go, groaning at how easily he reached the top of the shelf. He just stretched out his arms, where as I would have to jump slightly to even reach the bottom of the shelf.

“How do you know you’re my elder? For all you know I could be thirty-seven and with a killer cosmetic surgeon.” He moved the other books aside to make room for the one I had handed him before sliding it into place. “I’ll have you know that surgeons now a days are phenomenal at what they do.” I gave him another book, pointing a finger to where it was to go, and he complied willingly. He is bloody perfect, I tell you.

“You barely look legal, I doubt any doctor could do that good of a job on your face.” We found a nice pace between us, I pointing and he placing the books. “No doctor could be that bloody good.”

“I’m full of good genetics and mysteries, dear Louis, but one thing is for certain, I am definitely legal.” He gave me a wink and I couldn’t help but groan at how childish he was being. But a small part of me was happy that he was legal, nothing would be more awkward than him being seventeen and I twenty-one. “I’ve spent the past year of my life being 100% legal, and let me tell you, getting publicly smashed is almost as good as doing it at home.” He let out the laugh of a recently-freed teenager, and I remember when I too sounded like that. His smirk was casted downwards as he placed the book on the shelf, a look of trouble played over his face.

“Just nineteen?” I gasped in mock horror that he seemed to find funny by the laugh that rippled from him, “You’re but a wee laddie! I could never be with you, dear child, we must call it a quits before the government finds out about our secret love.”

“I don’t think the government would give a fuck about our secret love, if I’m being honest, we’re both two adults here.” I handed him the last book for that shelf before turning to the second top shelf, which I could reach better than the top.

“I don’t think I could handle myself, being with a child like you.” I shrugged, trying my best to act like I didn’t care when the smile that I tried to hide told differently. “I’m two years your senior, I feel like I should have wrinkles and grey hairs while watching you ride circles around me on your tricycle.”

“My tricycle has been gone for years and years, so that fetish of your’s will sadly never be played out.” He took another book from my hands and placed it where I gestured for it to go, gaining the hang of how I was doing things. “But I do think I see a grey hair.” And as if to prove his non-existant point, he pulled a hair out of my head with a small yelp coming from me reflexively.

“You think you’re so funny,” I groaned as I rubbed my head dramatically, “But the Tomlinson line has strong and very dark colored hair well into their sixties, I’ll let you know.” I laughed at the look he was giving me. His ‘are you kidding me’ face, I had figured, and I had a feeling that this face was going to be recurring.

“Sure you do, keep telling yourself that.” He laughed sarcastically. “The Styles line has no such luck, so before you know it, these curls will be dropping. Or worse, turning grey!”

“Don’t act like it would matter to you, I bet you could rock the salt and pepper.”  I said offhandedly, “People do porno’s with hot older men, maybe you use that as a backup profession.” I shrugged it off, and his single gawf caused even more effect on the joke.

“How do you know I don’t do porno’s already?” He raised an eyebrow, a challenge, and I just scoffed at him. “For all you know I could be the famous Handsy Harry and you could never know.”

“One of two things,” I stopped in my actions to look at him directly with my best know-it-all face, “Number one, if you were a porn star, your name would be so, /so/ much better than that. It makes you sound like a grabby toddler, not a hot teen.” He nodded at it, like it was a legitimate reason.

“And number two?” He smirked that heart-stopping smirk and I really, /really/ wished that he would just leave so I could collect myself and not look at him like he fell from the sky.

“I would have known there was a god sculpted guy walking the earth before now, trust me, I would have seen your face by now.” I said with a smirk that could rival any flirtatious person.

“Well, then I’m glad.” The smirk was still large on his lips, no sign of embarrassment or nerves, and I cursed his being yet again. Perfection. Bloody perfection.


End file.
